Bulgarian Posts, in which the state has a majority stake, has started offering international money express transfers.

The service initially will be available at 165 posts offices, and this will be increased to 1000, the company said on its website.

The transfers will be part of the Moneygram system and will reach more than 250 000 offices worldwide, public broadcaster Bulgarian National Television reported on January 12 2012.

Until now, remittances of money through Bulgarian Posts were available only at a limited number of post offices and transfers took about three days. The new system means that money may be transferred within 10 minutes "to anywhere in the world".

The company said that the start of the new service would make it accessible not only to people in large cities in Bulgaria, but also in villages where there were no bank branches.